How long will it be before there's a band or an album called Audio Has Been Muted, or AHBM, as they will be known to fans by the time they win the Brit for best newcomers? This striking example of stilted official English – ironically, a phrase used on file-sharing websites to protect copyright songs – kept flashing up during the live transmission of the Brit awards (ITV1) every time a presenter or prize-winner said something that might bring a fine from Ofcom.

Unlike the coverage of the Chilcot inquiry, which confesses on-screen to the slight delay in transmission permitting redaction, the two-hour show kept boasting of being "live from London", though it was clear they were using what is known in the business as a "Gallagher gap", which was needed when Oasis got the best album gong. Later, BBC News even pixelated Liam Gallagher's lips, that super-precaution to prevent lip-readers being offended.

Telling rock stars not to swear is like asking a puppy to look after a ball of string and few of the 2010 Brit winners resisted the temptation. Occasionally, the delay was too slow, and Kasabian, who looked as if they had begun their celebrations ahead of the envelope being opened, got the initial "F" of one sentence into living rooms.

Bizarrely, the sound was silenced twice during the lyrics of songs by Lily Allen, which made you wonder why ITV hadn't arranged for her to sing something transmittable. But this oddity symbolised the whole production's uncertainty about whether the entertainment was for the audience at home or the hordes inside Earls Court.

Host Peter Kay was clearly chosen to be sofa-friendly, but his jokes – over- reliant on the formula "Bolton's answer to Beyoncé" and so on – met in the hall a response that was not entirely silence but just as insulting: no reduction in the drunken chatter.

With the live guests ignoring the TV bits and the stuff the hall enjoyed being seen as unbroadcastable, you have to question whether the event is right for telly. Maybe next year, they should mute the audio and the video.